


you were only waiting for this moment to arise

by Lifeisahighway88



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Mentions of miscarriage, Past Domestic Violence, minor Doug Kendall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29117277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lifeisahighway88/pseuds/Lifeisahighway88
Summary: “I’m going to be a terrible mother," She blurts out suddenly, throwing the sponge into the tub along with the glove. She flops down on her side, a defeated look on her face and a trace of tears in her eyes.Chimney is taken aback by her words, once more moving closer, this time crouching down next to her. He makes no move to actually touch her again, just comes near enough so she knows she has him there for support if she needs. “Maddie, what are you talking about? You’re going to be a great mother. Is that what you've been so upset about?” He’s starting to get a sense for the reason she is acting the way she is.
Relationships: Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Comments: 16
Kudos: 27





	you were only waiting for this moment to arise

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time trying my hand at writing, so please be gentle. Special thanks to MaddieandChimney for being my super Beta and guiding me through my very first AO3 post.

He can hear her grunts of exhaustion all the way from the living room. What was supposed to be a lazy Sunday morning had turned into a manic four hour cleaning spree, culminating in a complete detail/scrub down of the bathroom. Maddie had been acting “off” all weekend. More paranoid than normal. Taking offense to every little word Chimney said. And now, she was obsessively cleaning every square inch of an already spotless apartment. It was like walking on eggshells, and out of character for a usually bubbly Maddie. While he knew the hormones had been affecting her greatly these past few months, he somehow intuitively knew it was more than that.

“What’s wrong Maddie?” She glares up at him from her spot on the bathroom floor where she had momentarily stopped cleaning the tub at the sound of his entrance. The vigor with which she had just been scrubbing seconds before leaves her out of breath as she wipes the sweat from her brow with the back of her non gloved hand. 

Maddie contemplates her words for a second, taking in his concerned question, but instead of answering, she scoffs, and resumes her feverish mission to clean away the dirt that was most likely long gone. She’s tired, and struggling, and her five month pregnant belly is protruding just past the point of comfortably bending over, not allowing her easy access to gracefully complete her task.

Chimney steps further into the room, looking at his pregnant girlfriend with even more concern than before. He’s worried. For her mental health, but more importantly for her physical well-being. She could hurt herself. She could hurt the baby from the strain. “Hey Maddie…? Baby, talk to me. I’m worried about you…“ She continues to scrub away with no response, turning the water on and off to re-wet her sponge before resuming her task. “You shouldn’t even be doing this right now.” He continues, frustrated. He’s only saying something because he cares about her. “You should be resting, not exerting all this extra energy on something that doesn’t need to be done.”

He’s trying to take care of her, but all it does is piss her off. She stops, and glares up at him again, this time with a bite he was not expecting. “Oh, so you think I’m useless now because I’m pregnant? That I can’t do anything right, is that it?” She knows she is being irrational, and unfair, but the hormones are clouding her emotions. All Chimney has ever wanted to do was help her, be there for her. And he was the most helpful father-to-be, more helpful than she could have ever dreamed of. But she can’t get out of her own head, and in this moment, all she can see is her own flaws. The lingering shame built on years of doubt, left by a man long gone, but sometimes still so shockingly present in the forefront of her mind.

Chimney bristles at the snarky comment, but recovers quickly. “Hey, hey… what’s going on? That’s not what I meant at all.”

He gently moves to run his right hand over the back of her head, intent on calming her down with the soothing action, but as soon as his fingers graze her hair, she shrugs it away, wanting nothing to do with his consoling her. The look on his face is pure confusion mixed with a little bit of hurt, and so he steps back to give her some space. He's not at all sure where her anger is stemming from. He can't remember anything between them particularly out of the ordinary. He does knows that pregnancy can mess with a woman’s mindset, but in this moment, he starts to worry that there might be something really wrong. This isn't her. Not at all. Maddie glances once more at her boyfriend, this time with slightly less accusation in her eyes. She knows he is just trying to help, but he also doesn’t know the self-deprecating thoughts that have been racing through her head the last few days. Hell, if she is being honest with herself, the thoughts that have been racing through her head for the last decade or so, buried somewhere in the back of her mind, waiting for the right opportunity to claw their way out. She just hasn’t had access to them. Until now. Until last week when she was once again triggered by something that should have been just an ordinary event. She caves.

“I’m going to be a terrible mother," She blurts out suddenly, throwing the sponge into the tub along with the glove. She flops down on her side, a defeated look on her face and a trace of tears in her eyes. 

Chimney is taken aback by her words, once more moving closer, this time crouching down next to her. He makes no move to actually touch her again, just comes near enough so she knows she has him there for support if she needs. “Maddie, what are you talking about? You’re going to be a great mother. Is that what you've been so upset about?” He’s starting to get a sense for the reason she is acting the way she is.

Maddie adamantly shakes her head in disagreement, eyes closed which isn’t helping the lingering nausea that had been slowly creeping its way back into her daily routine the past week. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the whole truth. He doesn’t understand. How could he? She had never told him… never told anyone for that matter, other than the one person she’d rather forget ever existed. Maddie slowly looks up at Chimney’s face, taking in the distraught look he is giving her. She knows she owes him an explanation, it’s not fair to him and not fair to them as a couple. Secrets did no good for anyone. She has been stuck in a haunting memory loop of the past this entire week, trying so hard to forget it ever happened, but as hard as she tries to forget, she knows she can’t ignore it any longer. This particular memory won’t let her escape unscathed. She sighs, searching his eyes once more for some kind of answer. He loves her so much, that much is clear in the way he is looking at her, and it’s in that moment she knows that no matter what she tells him, he will never judge her. Never make her feel bad. Never make her feel less than. Never hurt her and tell her it’s love.

Maddie slowly reaches over and takes Chimney’s hand from where it’s resting on his crouched knee. He takes the gesture as an opening to lower himself all the way to the ground and sit beside her, her hand in his, rubbing his thumb back and forth along the knuckles in a comforting, encouraging motion. The words tumble out of her before she can stop them.

“This isn’t my first baby.” She hears her admission echo throughout the tiny apartment bathroom, as though the world somehow knows a little dramatic effect is needed in the silence. “I had a miscarriage.” A beat. “With Doug”. Another beat. “When I was 29”.

Maddie takes a bated breath, looking at the father of her current baby, gauging his reaction and waiting for him to say something. Chimney’s reaction is surprisingly subtle, the shock of her admission only elevated by the heart wrenching sob that comes from Maddie’s lips barely a moment later. It’s a guttural cry, one marked by years of self-doubt and conditioning to believe she was less than. Less than worthy. Less than perfect. Chimney moves to pull her into his arms, unsure of what to say, but wanting to stop the horrible wailing that’s coming out of her. This time she welcomes the comfort, and crumples into him as best she can with her belly, the wailing seemingly worse than before as she lets out the years of pent up emotion that have resided within her.

She continues her sobs into his chest. “What if… what if I’m a terrible mother?” She hiccups out the words in between her crying. “What if I mess it all up Chim? I’m s-scared I’m n-never going to be g-good enough for this baby. That I-I’m never going to be h-healed enough.”

Maddie had been reeling from a flashback all week, sending her into an anxiety induced panic attack that hadn’t abated since. The cleaning, the overcompensating, was all in an effort to quell the suffocating feelings that threatened to pull her under. The memory had come back to her suddenly, triggered in an instant by something so seemingly insignificant and small, she couldn’t possibly see it coming. She had been making herself a grilled cheese while Chimney was at work, when something about the burnt toast had automatically triggered her. She’d forgotten for a second. Of her life  _ before _ . She hadn’t had a flashback in so long, but there, in a sudden blip of a moment, she was right back on the ground of her kitchen floor in Hershey, looking into the terrifying eyes of her very angry ex-husband.

.

“You think you’re gonna be a good mother, Maddie?” Doug's face is close to hers with a handful of her hair painfully fisted in his grasp. “You’ve never even been a halfway decent wife.”

The release on her scalp is sudden, accented by a slight backward motion that causes her head to bump against the kitchen cabinet behind her. Her cheek is stinging. She wipes her bloody nose with the back of her hand, her other hand automatically going to the barely showing bump of her stomach. It’s instinct, to protect the little life inside her…but he sees it.

He doubles back, grabbing her face roughly in between his index finger and his thumb, squeezing painfully but not enough to bruise. “You think you can blame everything on the baby Maddie? You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” She grimaces at the pressure on her cheeks. “You’re really fucking stupid sometimes, you know that?” The grip on her face is enough to make her eyes water, but it’s not the pain that hurts her the most. It’s his words.

She had burned the damn grilled cheese. It wasn’t her fault… not really. She had been distracted, preoccupied by the queasiness that had suddenly come over her, a state which she found herself in more often than not these past few months. That, mixed with the spaciness of her pregnancy brain, made for a deadly combination of habitual failure in Doug’s mind. The smoke filled kitchen sounded the fire alarm throughout the house. It was meant to be a nice gesture, feeding her husband who was working on a business call in the next room. Unlucky for her, the failed gesture had only aided in cutting the call short, and Doug was less than pleased. 

She should have known it would backfire.

His grip releases some, but she is dizzy. The blow to her face, mixed with the morning sickness from before bubbles up inside her. She feels the sick edging its way up her stomach before she can say anything. He must see the color drain from her face, because as quickly as he had grabbed her, he releases her again as she vomits to the side of where she is sitting. The disgust on his face is evident as he watches her heave, no actual food coming up other than bile because she hadn’t felt well enough to eat anything yet that morning.

Doug makes no move to help her, instead looking at her with only pity and disappointment. All she ever did was disappoint him. He backs away, shaking his head with words of disapproval on his way out of the room. “You’re fucking useless, Maddie.” And then he’s gone. She lets out the tears she was holding back, rubbing her belly and apologizing silently to her unborn child for the life she had knowingly brought him or her into.

.

Chimney’s eyes are now also filled with tears as he listens to the tale end of Maddie’s harrowing story. Her sobs have stopped some, but she still looks so scared. So lost. So completely in doubt of her own capabilities as a mother that it breaks his heart. She doesn’t regret telling him. In fact, it almost allows her to let it go, eases the ache in her heart she had been harboring, something she hadn’t been able to release all week.

There is a question on the tip of Chimney’s tongue that he isn’t sure he is ready to ask. Of course he imagines the worst, but instinctively, Maddie knows what he is going to say next and stops him before he has the chance to speak, “He didn’t make me lose the baby.” She sounds suddenly more confident in her words than even she believes. She amends her statement. “I mean, I guess I’ll never really know for sure, but the miscarriage happened without any… “ She trails off, and he understands what she’s implying. Without any  _ physical altercation _ . It didn’t happen after he’d hit her. The thought makes his stomach turn as he thinks it, but he doesn’t say anything. “A few weeks later,” she continues. “It happened a few weeks later.”

Maddie is silent, not really looking at him. She is lost in thought, grieving over the precious baby she never got to meet, but simultaneously thanking God that she didn’t end up bringing a baby into this world with  _ him _ . It makes her feel guilty, that a small part of her is thankful for the miscarriage. That the thought of being tied to Doug for the rest of her life makes her feel sick, and that not bringing an innocent baby into such chaos was a blessing in disguise.

Chimney can see she is stuck somewhere within the trauma of her own mind, and so he tentatively lures her back to the present with a small back and forth motion of his thumb on her hand. Maddie looks at him, a worried pout on her bottom lip, terrified that he’ll hate her for keeping this from him until now, but recognizing that she is no longer in the same position she was all those years ago. This isn’t Doug. This is Chimney, the most wonderful, understanding man she has ever known other than her brother. He doesn’t prove her wrong.

“Maddie, look at me,” He finally says, trying to get her to really hear him and what he is about to say. She looks up at him then, tears threatening to fall from both his eyes and hers, “you are going to be an amazing mother, Maddie.” He repeats her name to let it sink in, as he tentatively reaches out to wipe away the tear that silently falls down her cheek at his words.“You are the most caring, kind, selfless person I know. You have been through so much, yet look how strong you are.” The slight nod of her head tells him she hears what he is saying so he continues. “I’m scared too… so, so scared… scared that I’ll fail as a father because I didn’t have anyone to teach me how to be one.” He considers his next words, digesting them for his own sake, as well as hers. “We’re going to make mistakes, but maybe,” He pauses and gives her a slight smile, looking at her with all the love and support in the world, “maybe, we can both be scared together. Both make mistakes together.”

Maddie gives a hesitant smile back, gripping the hand that’s holding hers even tighter, for a second unable to process how she got so lucky with someone so unlike the man that ruled her life before.

“You’re not alone here Maddie, and I know it’s all unknown, and anything can happen. Trust me when I say that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing either,” She smiles bigger at that and lets out a tear filled laugh, “but I will always,  _ always  _ be here to protect you, to protect this baby, no matter what. You and this baby are everything in the world to me, and I couldn’t imagine raising our son or daughter with anyone else but you.”

Maddie leans in, kissing him passionately, the salty taste of their collective tears falling between their lips. For the first time in what seems like forever, she finally feels as though she can release the weight she has been carrying around with her all these years. The ache in her chest dissipates some, and as she pulls back to look into the eyes of the man she adores more than anything in this world, she knows that she isn’t alone. That mistakes are meant to be made without fear of repercussion, and that no matter what, she has someone there by her side to help her through the doubt. Maybe she can honor the life of her lost baby, not by forgetting it ever happened but by allowing herself the freedom to finally make those mistakes. To live her life knowing that sometimes, unperfect is actually the most perfect thing in the world.


End file.
